Design, deconstruction, and development details of our indie RPG!

Monthly Archives: August 2014

Contrary to what one might imagine based on my adventure-loving characters, I really don’t care for the hassles of traveling. x_x I believe it’s been at least two years since I last did any major traveling—and somehow, even though I know it’s a pain, I always forget just how much of a pain it is. D: Maybe it’s a mental safeguard or psychological repression. I don’t know!

Translation: I spent almost the entire past week generally freaking out about how I could make this trip productive. In hindsight, if I had given all that preparation time to my game and then my trip was 100% unproductive, it would still have been a net gain. As-is, well, I’ll do what I can. I could be underestimating effects like jet lag too because it’s been a while.

One “downside” of weekly updates is that I have to be upfront with stuff like this, but that’s alright. I have no desire to hide it. I’ll just have to sink in that much more effort to compensate. I had actually intended to play through Tales of Xillia 2 when I’m back, but I’ll see how much I can get done while away before deciding what to do. My game does come first!

At any rate, I have five more character design rounds to evaluate now—hoping to knock out some of them on the plane and in the airport—and I’ve made some small progress in understanding how base Unity functionality works (on the layer underneath my favorite assets). Also, one of the features that ORK currently lacks is the ability to have multiple moves per turn, so another user and I are working out together what we’d want from such a feature, then we’ll probably pool money to make it happen. =) That took up a good several hours of planning. (…and I see now that I missed a reply, so there go another couple of hours right after this post!)

gamingislove (the maker of ORK) is also so fast at releasing new versions that I’ll have to go back and figure out how I can benefit from the additions of three new releases that went on while I’ve been plugging away at 2D. At the top of my list to investigate are stuff like ORK’s own plugin system, a Bestiary system, leveling up without experience points, a new equipment list style for menus, and a certain new battle AI step.

Implemented at my request, AI can now count the number of allies, enemies, or total characters on the battlefield and then determine what to do—so I can make my monsters even more devious than before! ^^ For example, I’ll update my Sylph Mage enemy, who I was already very happy with, so that when she’s alone she’ll never use mere stat boosts or inflict status effects.

Battles are the centerpiece of Dreamblazers and of basically everything I’ve ever believed about RPGs, so features like this are very exciting for me. : D

Last week’s achievements

* Found out that there’s an even easier way to make tilemaps than what I did last time
* Scoped out pixel artists (and I might have found a good one for environments!)
* Learned how to create animations and collisions with 2D Toolkit in Unity… kind of.

Current focus

The transition to 2D.

Weekly goals

* Figure out how to use 2D Toolkit (and other Unity assets if needed) to get basic top-down map movement functional
* When character design rounds resume, those become top priority

Comments

Next Wednesday, I’m taking a brief family trip, so I spent some of this past week preparing. I’ve realized that I need either an iPhone or an iPad for times like this so I won’t have down time on planes, in cars, and so on—and a side benefit is that maybe I’ll put the game on iOS eventually! (I wasn’t planning on it since I don’t want to push beyond my means, but if I already have the hardware available for testing…) I’m leaning iPad, but in either case, hopefully I’ll still be able to get stuff accomplished while away!

As for what I did get done… This past week is when my will smashed up against my lack of knowledge. =P Now I know how to turn sprite sheets into animations, but not yet how to convert that into a functional game object. I’m probably missing something obvious.

In hindsight, it’s crazy how much I’ve accomplished without truly “knowing” what I’m doing. I’ve learned so much about ORK and 2D Toolkit only to discover that I’ve learned almost nothing about Unity itself. So now I need to step back a bit and grapple with Unity fundamentals in order to advance forward.

Last week’s achievements

* Learned how to create and use tile maps with 2D Toolkit in Unity, including colliders
* Learned how to not have Unity distort 2D sprites on me with anti-aliasing or lossy quality or various other things (and by “learned how to” I mean flailed about like a Magikarp for a while until Kirb, the developer of 2D indie Metroidvania Dead Gear, explained how to))

Current focus

The transition to 2D.

Sample stuff

Using placeholder tiles from OpenGameArt.org for now, this is the current draft of the continent of Miharu in Unity! The real version will, of course, have proper-looking rivers, bridges, some rounded coasts, probably triangular coasts, and most of all it’ll be a 16-bit aesthetic instead of 8-bit!

Showing it off at this scale is a bit small, so here‘s a full-resolution version of an earlier draft. If you squint, this continent kind of looks like a three-leaf clover; if you squint even harder, it looks kind of like a bird. I’ll probably play up one of those elements further!

Weekly goals

* Figure out how to use 2D Toolkit (and other Unity assets if needed) to get basic top-down map movement functional
* When character design rounds resume, those become top priority

Comments

Three steps down, more to go! Before top-down map movement can be functional, collision detection needs to be functional; before collision detection can be functional, top-down maps (AKA stuff to collide with) need to exist; before top-down maps can exist, sprites need to look pixel perfect.

With those three issues resolved, there are still at least three more factors: character animation, character movement, and camera movement. It’s slightly concerning that Kirb said it took him nearly a year to get his 2D aspects fully working, but for now I’m hopeful that it won’t be the same story with me since a 2D action platformer has more complex physics than a 2D RPG. Besides, there’s another self-professed Unity newbie who managed to get an extremely basic RPG pretty functional within three and a half months, so I’ve got to keep up here. =P

Last week’s achievements

* Finished AI for remaining enemies
* Started a secondary blog for general musings (this is only tangentially related to game development, but I already have a couple posts planned talking about ideas I’ve left on the cutting room floor, so following the Dreamblazers tag will be pretty complementary to this primary devlog side of the site; any mainly-game-focused entries will be posted or cross-posted here, though)

Current focus

The transition to 2D.

Sample stuff

My Sylph Mage enemy has the crown jewel of AI so far. I could probably even stick her into the player party as a CPU-controlled character and she’d do fine!

Weekly goals

* Figure out how to use 2D Toolkit (and other Unity assets if needed) to get basic top-down map movement functional
* If character design rounds resume immediately on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, those become top priority

Comments

This is a week mixed with excitement and dread. =P I’m assuming that 2D is in enough demand that the creators of various 2D-related Unity assets are totally on the ball in making implementation easy for designers like me. If I’m wrong, then I fear a long road ahead.

If I’m right, though, then fairly soon I’ll be making layouts for dungeons and towns and such. That’s exciting, but out of all the things I’m capable of doing—basically anything except music, art, or any direct C# programming other than the most basic—map-making is by far my weakest area. I’ve already gathered hundreds of placeholder sprites in various sizes, but putting them together into playable areas that feel natural is uncharted territory for me. I can name many RPGs with great puzzles, but dungeon layouts themselves never stick out enough in my memory to help me learn anything from them.

But as my character Leaf would say, “Press on with it!” I’ll climb that mountain when I get there. =) First off, time to see what these 2D Unity assets are made of…